Was It All Worth It?
by Hobohunter
Summary: After Wesker's death, Steve has some quick decisions to make that affect his life and the top Scientist of TriCell, what will his choice be? Was it all worth it? Oneshot. -Implied- SteveSherry :3


"You're going to have to make a decision."

Steve Burnside stared out of the window of the corporate office, trying to stall the answer by throwing his attention to the rain pounding outside. He slipped a gloved hand under his pressed black suit jacket and removed a cigarette from the metal case that resided in his breast pocket, "Do I have to right now?"

"It would be best if you did." the Tricell executive leaned against his desk with arms folded across a clean sky blue suit. "The board will be meeting soon to discuss matters of a replacement, and I'm going to need your input."

"So soon?" he smirked and took out a pure silver lighter. He flicked it open and pressed the open flame to his cigarette's tip. Orange flames danced across Steve's inpenetrable black sunglasses before he closed the lighter with a quick flick of his wrist. "I thought they'd have a mourning period at least."

"There's no time." the executive asserted, "Wesker's death has left quite the power vaccum in the company."

Steve took in a deep gulp from his cigarette, letting the smoke curl around his lips and tongue before he exhaled from his nose, "Yeah, I hear getting blown up in a volcano can do that to a guy. Hell of a way to go, eh? Figured he'd always go in the most extreme way possible. Guess I was right."

The executive sighed, "I'm glad to see you handling your mentor's death so well, Steve. But right now isn't exactly the time to make jokes. You have to start thinking of your survival, because that's what's at stake. And her's too."

Steve frowned and turned to face him, "What the hell are you talking about? They wouldn't touch her, she's done way too much for this company to be touched."

"Exactly my point." the executive said, "She's done too much, and some would say she's far too much of a liability. Not to mention that she's not exactly here of her own free will. And what do you think would happen if the U.S. government caught wind of that?"

"They haven't done anything yet." Steve puffed another cloud, "It's been almost fourteen years since Raccoon City, and thirteen since she was taken off the radar."

"Yes, by Wesker." the executive sighed and pinched his temple. "But Wesker wasn't the company, and not everyone was a friend to him. His enemies are going to be coming for you. And her. You may think you could handle yourself, and you might be right. But what about her? How long has it been since she's been outside? Or how long was her last conversation that didn't involve those plants and the viruses?"

Steve started to answer, but words failed his defense. He clamped his mouth, defeated. "You've got a point." he abdicated and turned back to the downpour. More smoke billowed from his nostrils, giving him the appearance of some modern-day civilized dragon. After another long drag on the nail in his coffin Steve let the cigarette drop to the floor and crushed it with the heel of his polished black dress shoe. The lump of scar tissue on his chest had begun to hurt - the same scar that had made him the monster he was today. The same monster as the man he vowed to never be. And now that he looked at his reflection in the window, he could no longer make out the scared little boy who had run for his life in that island prison so long ago. Instead, all that looked back was the man he hated the most. The man who had become his mentor. His surrogate father. "I'll do it."

The executive smiled, his eyes gleaming behind square spectacles, "I knew you would see reason." He pushed off the desk, "I've got that meeting to go to in a half hour. Why don't you go down and get some rest? I'll take care of the transfer of shares to you. Don't worry about it."

Steve nodded. Or at least, he thought he nodded. He could not be too sure, as his entire mind felt as though it had been wrapped with cotton and his senses were stuffed with fiberglass. He walked along the polished corridors of the administration wing, his footsteps muffled by lush burgundy carpet. People passed by him, but he never acknowledged their existence, much like they never did the same to him. It suited him fine, He did not want their acceptance. There was no need.

He walked into an elevator and extracted his card key. "Keys to the Kingdom." he smirked. That's what Wesker had called it, every damn time they took a trip. He inserted the key and waited for the light to turn green before punching in the code. The elevator hummed and Steve felt his stomach lurch from the G-Force the machine was pulling as it descended into the very bowels of the beast. Despite the speed, the machine came to a smooth halt without so much as a shift in gravity. The doors slid open and Steve walked out into the sterile white environment before him.

Immediately the stark white snapped his mind back to the first time he was surrounded by so much white. Sharp, vicious blades of cold air sliced at his skin and threatened to peel the layers until only bone remained. Snow and white-on-white blurred his vision and made him blind. He gasped in a gust of hot air and the world reshaped into a collection of geometric shapes. The Antarctic had melted away, revealing the office beneath. Gone was the cold and the feelings of lonely helplessness. Steve was confident again, cock-sure, and not the same man he used to be. No, that was a boy he left behind. A boy died in that wasteland, along with all his boyish delusions. He walked away from that spot, partly to continue with his job, and to get away from the memories.

The sub-basement held the culmination of Tricell's bio research; the continued legacy born from what remnants could be salvaged from the ruins of Umbrella. Rumors of the company rising like a pheonix from the financial and political ashes still excited the air waves, but these were only the fantasies of madder men. If only Umbrella had been better at covering its tracks. Had they not been as obvious as a James Bond villain, they may have gotten away with their research. That was the lesson Tricell had learned well. But there was another reason for Tricell's success, and she sat in the room just beyond the glass door Steve was standing in front of.

She was hunched over in her black leather chair, staring at an impossibly flat computer monitor covered with windows of text. Steve watched with amazement as she moved her hands with the skill of a conductor directing an orchestra through one of Beethoven's symphonies, moving from one window to the next with neck-breaking speed. Sometimes she would leave just enough time to type a quick note or open another tab to delve deeper into a subject that peeked her interest. It was hard for Steve to decide which was more incredible: how smart the girl was, or just how beautiful Sherry Birkin had become.

He remembered her sad story from the files he had snuck into a few years ago: the only daughter of William and Annette Birkin; two of Umbrella's top researchers in Raccoon City and the masterminds behind the G-Virus that had ravaged that city. The poor thing had even been impregnated by her father when he became a B.O.W., but saved at the last minute by Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy, but her body still contained scant traces of the virus, dormant as they young Birkin girl grew up under the cold care of Albert Wesker after he had kidnapped her from the United States Government. He brought her to the agency's facility, making her slave to William Birkin's damnable work. At the tender age of twelve, she had witnessed horrors that one three times her age could even comprehend. In those lessons, Sherry learned that had to grow up fast in the world, or be killed even faster. Even in her twenties, her mature and full body had could not hope to match the maturity and inherent years of wisdom stored in her mind.

Sherry had transcended the pale definition of "genuis", and what's more is that she was well aware of this. She had read the notes of Spencer, Marcus, and Ashford; the work of her forebearers who had unwittingly laid the foundation for her own work; perhaps the greatest and most horrible achievement that had ever been produced.

Steve smiled and removed his sunglasses before knocking on the door. Sherry jumped and snapped around to see pair of glowing gold-on-crimson eyes staring back at her. If she had not seen those eyes so many times over the years, she might have been terrified. Instead, she sighed and stalked over to the door, "What is it, Steve?"

"I just wanted to talk." Steve said, still taken aback by her sharp, cold tone, "Or am I in the wrong for coming in to check on you?"

Sherry sighed, "Oh yes. I suppose with him gone I'm transferred over to you now, is that right?" She huffed and waved him in quickly, "Well, get in before I change my mind."

Steve walked in and the door closed behind him with a long hiss. "How's it going?"

Sherry glared at him and then turned her attention to the computer and stacks of paper surrounding it. Just now Steve realized that there were styrofoam cups and plates scattered around the room. "It's impossible."

Steve blanched. This was not what he wanted to hear, "What do you mean?"

Sherry pointed to the montior and the reels of mathematical and chemical equations covering every pixel on the screen. None of it meant a thing to Steve. "You know I never finished high school, right?"

"Just makes me feel even better." Sherry brushed back her blonde hair and sat back in the chair. She droned on about all the errors in the molecular structures, mathematical equations and things Steve never even knew existed. At long last, Sherry finished with a sigh, "We're ruined. The company's ruined, and it's all thanks to that stupid bastard! He's brought us down just like he did Umbrella!"

Steve stood up and clenched his fists, they were fucked. Hard. The BSAA would come and find the facility, unless they were to incinerate it immediatley, burn up all the proof, make it look like a riot had happened, maybe a group could come and...

"Burnside? Burnside?" Sherry was watching Steve as he stood there, his fists clenched and his eyes hidden behind the glasses that consealed his abnormal eyes. She knew what he was thinking and before he knew it, Sherry retrieved a single laptop what looked like the portable flamethrower the lab had to exterminate failed specimens.

Anything that was infected with the virus needed to be burned, cleansed from existence so that no one knew what went on down here. There would be nothing for some poor fool to stumble upon and bring about an infection that would lay waste to the world.

Steve grabbed the gun and started to burn the papers and computers that were on the tables. He needed to make sure that all of the important things that were going to make him rich were complelty wiped off the face of the Earth.

Both of them burned up the evidence, the proof and findings that Tricell had founded and created, they weren't fools, they had too much experience with facilites and nucular blasts. The most that were in this facility were documents and videos of their experiments, all the specimens had been shipped out to Africa when Wesker had went down before his demise. All Sherry and Steve had to do was destroy Sherry's findings and make sure a riot group burned down the buliding after the both of them go the fuck out of there.

After finishing up the lab and burning up their clothes and belongings that they didn't need, Steve and Sherry made their way out of the facility and sealed off the underground exit from the rest of the world. They would never go back, it was too dangerous, and Steve had to keep watch of Sherry still to make sure that no other company would be after her. With any luck, they all accepted the commonly held belief that the last Birkin had died by Wesker's hands. That little lie would keep them safe, at least for now.

Steve swore through grit teeth as he drove, cursing the circumstances that led to their rash decision. They may have been older, but fate and the older men in their lives were once more guiding them to ruin. It was not the first time it had happened to either of them. His Father had ruined his life, just as Sherry's father had ruined hers and millions of others. They were the children of fathers who went and got their hands stuck in Umbrella, and it cost them everything.

As much as they didn't want to admit it, they were both alike in way too many ways. Even their initals were the same: S.B. It was far too much for coincidence. As Steve drove down the highway, he glanced at the blonde girl - no. The blonde woman - and noticed how much she had matured over the years. She was five years younger than him, he always thought of her as a kid. Steve was thirty-one now and that meant she wasn't far behind him.

Sherry held her laptop in her lap, her eyes staring out of the windshield and watching the road in front of them. She closed her eyes and rolled down the window to feel the gentle breeze blow by. Wesker rarely let her go outside, and this was a pleasant change for her, and she was starting to like this new sense of freedom. Sherry knew they had no place to go, nobody to turn to. She'd never go and impose on Claire, that wouldn't be the right thing to do. Besides, Steve and Sherry both needed to balance out their lives and figure out where to go on their own, and that was far away from Tricell, WilPharma and any other company that wanted to use them again.

Steve reached over and found Sherry's hand. To his surprise, her slender fingers wrapped around his, gripping with surprising strength. He smiled a genuine grin for the first time all day and whispered without thinking, "We're going to be okay."

And he believed it.

_A/N: This story was written for Xanthia Oliphant since she wrote such a lovely Cleon story with me in mind, so I (with the help of my boyfriend ArthasvsLeon) wrote this story in return! I haven't written a StevexSherry in a LONG time, but I hope she enjoys it!_

_And thanks again to ArthasvsLeon , I couldn't do this without you!_

_Happy New Year's y'all! :)_


End file.
